The Bible Of Unconscious Buffoonery

by Stephen J. Gertz

Extra engraved titlepage.

Imagine that you've written a book that no one will publish; it's considered over-long and looney. So, to pump-up its importance, impress, and tacitly solicit subscriptions, you ask eminent men, oh, around sixty of 'em, to contribute "panegyricke verses upon the Authour and his booke" extolling your wonderfulness and that of your volume. Amazingly, they do. But your contributors ridicule the book.

You include their mockery, anyway. Some attention is better than none. You underwrite the cost of printing the book yourself and in doing so produce one of the great vanity publications ever issued, and if your contributors insult you, well, how flattering to your vanity that these great men took the time to do so.

Such was the case of Thomas Coryat (1577-1617) and his book, Three crude veines are presented in this booke following (besides the foresaid Crudities): no less flowing in the body of the booke, then the Crudities themselues, two of rhetoricke and one of poesie…, popularly known by its title from the engraved titlepage/frontispiece (and subsequent editions) as Coryat's Crudities: Hastily gobled up in five moneths trauells in France, Sauoy, Italy, Rhetia com[m]only called the Grisons county, Heluetia alias Switzerland, some parts of high Germany, and the Netherlands. Newly Digested in the hungry aire of Odcombe in the County of Somerset, now dispersed to the nourishment of the traveling Members of the Kingdome.

Coryat's traveling shoes.

Within, Coryat records his step-by-step 1,975 mile schlep across Western Europe. He didn't intend for it to be funny, it just turned out that way. Outlandish, toilsome and wacky adventures are related with such sober and solemn seriousness that the clod is completely unaware that he is a clown in his own touring circus.

"There probably has never been another such combination of learning and unconscious buffoonery as is here set forth. Coryate was a serious and pedantic traveller who (as he states in his title) in five months toilsome travel wandered, mostly on foot, over a large part (by his own reckoning 1,975 miles) of western Europe. His adventures probably appeared to his contemporaries as more ridiculous than exciting, but at this remove, his chronicle by its very earnestness provides an account of the chief cities of early seventeenth century Europe which is at least valuable as it is amusing. It was probably his difficulties with the booksellers which induced Coryate to solicit the extraordinary sheaf of testimonials prefixed to the volume. Possibly he acted upon the notion apparently now current among publishers of social directories that every person listed is a prospective purchaser of the work. At any rate he secured contributions from more than sixty writers at the time. Among his panegyrists appear the names of Jonson, Chapman, Donne, Campion, Harington, Drayton, Davies of Hereford, and others, each contributor vying to mock poor Coryate with solemn ridicule." (Pforzheimer) 

Now, imagine you're Ben Jonson, one of the contributors. You've read the book, and, after re-inserting your eyeballs - which, as if in an animated cartoon, grew to the size of softballs and popped-out of their sockets - you consider what to make of this. As your contribution you write a verse explanation of the engraved frontispiece, decoding its emblematic illustrations. It reads, in part:

Our Author in France rode on Horse without stirrop,
And in Italic bathed himselfe in their syrrop.

His love to horses he sorteth out strange prettilie,
He rides them in France, and lies with them in Italie.

You get the idea. It's an Elizabethan comedy roast but the roastee (known as the British Ulysseys, with accent on Odd-essy), basking in the attention, is deaf to the jokes. It's Mystery Science Theater 3000, the book edition, with eminent readers hurling written wisecracks at the deliriously ridiculous and over-long text while they peruse it from their reading chair, rather than vocally razzing a deliriously ridiculous and over-long movie from their seats in the theater.

Here's an excerpt from John Donne's panegyric to Coryat and his Crudities:

This Booke, greater than all, producest now,
Infinite worke, which doth so farre extend,
That none can study it to any end.
Tis no one thing; it is not fruite, nor roote;
Nor poorly limited with head or foote.
If man be therefore man, because he can
Reason, and laugh, thy booke doth halfe make man.
One halfe being made, thy modesty was such,
That thou on th' other halfe wouldst never touch.
When wilt thou be at full, great Lunatique?

Ouch!

Coryat apparently experienced this - and the other testimonials - as "Oooh, they like me, they really like me!"

I am sory I can speake so little of so flourishing and beautifull a Citie [as Turin]. For during that little time that I was in the citie, I found so great a distemperature in my body, by drinking the sweete wines of Piemont, that caused a grievous inflammation in my face and hands; so that I had but a smal desire to walke much abroad in the streets. Therefore I would advise all English-men that intend to travell into Italy, to mingle their wine with water as soone as they come into the country, for feare of ensuing inconveniences... 

In short, Coryat was drunk during his entire stay in Turin.

Complete copies of Coryat's Crudities are scarce. "Perfect copies with the plates intact are not common...The D.N.B. has repeated the statement that the Chetham copy is the only perfect one known" (Pforzheimer).

A complete copy has, however, recently come into the marketplace.  Offered by Whitmore Rare Books, the asking price is $25,000. Despite its faults it's one of the great travelogues.

"Coryate drew on his experiences in writing Coryats Crudities (1611), which was intended to encourage courtiers and gallants to enrich their minds by continental travel. It contains illustrations, historical data, architectural descriptions, local customs, prices, exchange rates, and food and drink, but is too diffuse and bulky - there are 864 pages in the 1905 edition - to become a vade-mecum. To solicit ‘panegyric verses’ Coryate circulated copies of the title-page depicting his adventures and his portrait, which had been engraved by William Hole and which he considered a good likeness. About sixty contributors include many illustrious authors, not all in verse, some insulting, some pseudonymous" (DNB).

Coryat Meets Margarita Emiliana bella Cortesana di Venetia,

As for Thomas Coryat, the "great Lunatique" died in 1617 and now permanently sleeps with the horses in Italy, which beats sleeping with the fishes in Sicily. It's the difference among character assassination, corporeal execution, and the bestial joy of equine companionship on an arduous journey; bathing in horse-piss in Italy was a bonus, pass the Purell, please - and a barf-bag and incontinence pad, the better to endure Coryat's voyage to France and his feed to hungry fish as written in chapter one's first sentence:

I was imbarked at Dover, about tenne of the clocke in the morning, the fourteenth of May, being Saturday and Whitsun-eve, Anno 1608, and arrived in Calais (which Caesar calleth Ictius portus, a maritime towne of that of part Picardy, which is commonly called le pais reconquis; that is, the recovered Province, inhabited in former times by the ancient Morini) about five of the clocke in the afternoone, after I had varnished the exterior parts of the ship with the excrementall ebullitions of my tumultuous stomach, as desiring to satiate the gormandizing paunches of the hungry Haddocks (according as I have hieroglyphically expressed it in the front of my booke) with that wherewith I had superfluously stuffed my selfe at land, having made my rumbling belly their capacious aumbrie.

It isn't often that an author opens his book with a tableau presenting the painting of a ship with his (or anyone else's) diarrhea. It's a riveting first sentence with repulsive denouement; readers may spew the contents of their now tumultuous stomachs through their northern orafice. Yes, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times, a dark and stormy night, with emphasis on the dark storm raging at Coryat's southern orafice. Yet sunny skies and silliness await the intrepid reader. Be not afraid. Read on ye armchair traveller, you have nothing to lose but your sanity to this seventeenth century version of your friend's interminable seminar with soporific slideshow about a recent vacation, no detail too picayune to omit. Coryat, for instance, never fails to tell the exact time of day that something occurred, and, it seems, reports on everything he put in his mouth -

 I did eate fried Frogges this citie [Cremona]

- and everything he encountered, with the possible exception of dust motes. He then concludes his exhausting review of each city with a breezy, unintentionally amusing, "so much for Paris;" "so much for Venice;" "so much for Milan." It's so very much.

Yea, verily and alas, the booke lacketh backgrounde musik by the eminent Elizabethan composer and performer, Boots Randolph, playing that olde English aire, Yaketie Saxe, to highlight its slapsticke gravitie and the inadvertent Keystone Cop qualitie of Coryat's adventures chasing after Europe, and enliven his dreary descriptions.

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Titlepage.

CORYAT, Thomas. [From engraved title]: Coryats Crudities. Hastily gobled up in five moneths trauells in France, Sauoy, Italy, Rhetia com[m]only called the Grisons county, Heluetia alias Switzerland, some parts of high Germany, and the Netherlands. Newly Digested in the hungry aire of Odcombe in the County of Somerset, now dispersed to the nourishment of the traveling Members of the Kingdome. London: Printed by W[illiam]. S[tansby]., 1611. First edition.  Quarto in eights (8 1/8 x 6 inches; 206 x 153 mm). [-]2; a8-b8 ([-]1 inserted after a3); b4; c8-g8; h4-l4; B8-D8 (D3 inserted after preceding D); E8-3C8; 3D4; [-]2 (first is signed 3E3; both are errata). Extra engraved titlepage (i.e. frontispiece) by William Hole, five engraved plates (three folding), two text engravings and numerous woodcut initials and head-pieces. With two leaves of errata.

Pforzheimer 218. Cox 98. Keynes 70.

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Images courtesy of Whitmore Rare Books, currently offering this volume, with our thanks.
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Travels with Kapuscinski, Travel Writer Extraordinaire

by Alastair M. Johnston

Ryszard Kapuscinski: a Life, by Artur Domoslawski, Verso, 2012, 456 pp., cloth in d.j.

You know who makes my blood boil? Rick Steves, the twerp with a travel show on American public television. A TV crew follows him around Europe while he stumbles into local museums and fancy hotels with a yokelish manner that yells, Look out natives, it's those culturally deprived Yankees again! He thinks if someone doesn't understand him all he has to do is raise his voice. After all if they don't understand English they should. Well, I suppose there's an audience for his banal brand of travel.

I am more of the adventure travel type: I've been lost in the Nubian desert, pursued by armed bandits in Southern Sudan, attended a Candomblé ceremony in the slums of Brazil (with fireworks to get the Gods' attention), and got so disoriented at a Voodoo ritual in Port-au-Prince that I wandered lost in the backstreets of the Haitian capital half the night until I found the sanctuary of the Oloffson hotel. In my teens I was held at the Bulgarian border, suspected of being an Anarchist because I had long hair. I was freed after a humiliating haircut done with tiny surgical scissors that left long wisps and bald spots, giving me even more of the air of an escaped lunatic. A Sikh man wept as they cut off his beard.

So my kind of travel journalist is always coming across armed roadblocks in the Third World and thinking he is about to get blown away.

"I was waiting for them to set me on fire... I felt an animal fear, a fear that struck me with paralysis ... My life was going to end in inhuman torment." (The Soccer War, pp. 133-4)

Ryszard Kapuscinski is my kind of writer, coming from a tradition that connects Orwell and Marquez. He travels to unusual locales with a purpose: to report on a revolution or insurrection, and while I wouldn't intentionally go into a war zone, it's thrilling to read about it. Like him, I contracted malaria in Africa, and, like him, felt it was the price to pay for the incredible experiences I had there. For years I would scour Granta magazine looking for pieces by Kapuskinski while waiting for an addition to his slim shelf of books (there are but seven of his cultural travelogues). I got the news he had died from the dustjacket of Travels with Herodotus (2004), and it was a sad blow.

Ryszard Kapuscinski was born in 1932 in Pinsk, which was in Eastern Poland then. After the Nazis invaded and killed the Jewish population, the Red army took possession and it became part of Belarus. Kapuscinski had a mother who idolized him and a father who didn't understand him. When his father saw him sitting up late, reading and underlining a book, he told his son: Go to bed, son, by morning I will have underlined the entire thing for you.

But that is later: during the War the father was about to be deported to Siberia so fled to German-occupied Poland and joined the Resistance. Maria, his wife, and children followed — out of the frying pan into the fire. Young Ryszard, 7 years old, experienced terror, poverty and hunger. The War was horrific but he survived by blending in, not trying to be a hero. He was a good Catholic, then a good Communist. So, the author asks, is this how he survived in all his fantastic adventures as an adult? Is the real Ryszard just a writer creating the mythic Ryszard in books about wars & revolutions in Angola, Congo, Iran, Ethiopia and Latin America?

The central question at the core of any biography is, Who was this person? Kapuscinski was a reporter and therefore a good listener and observer. Even those who seemingly were his closest friends only remember him listening. The book is a series of "snapshots," but they are as enigmatic as the close-up of that Polish face with a cigarette and querying eyes, scrutinizing the reader from the front cover.

RK grew up in a Totalitarian system. The way to survive is to keep secrets, to lie constantly, to reinvent oneself. We must not judge people who lived through the War and Stalinism: they did what was necessary. RK was a party member, a keen one; but calling him a "collaborator" is pointless. He was a youth activist, a reporter and a poet. His literary activities were in line with party orthodoxy. Revolutionary propaganda was second nature to him, so it is interesting that we know him as a reporter seemingly outside all the revolutions he witnessed and wrote about in his magisterial works. However one reason the state machines of Iran, Latin America and Ethiopia were so familiar was that he could have been writing about home.

1956 was the year of a great thaw in Poland, a turning point in its history: A youth festival attended by hundreds of thousands of young people saw an influx of Western Europeans who brought jazz, cool colorful clothes and an eagerness to get it on. People were becoming more critical of the regime and changes began to occur. There was still censorship but the truth began to seep out. RK began his career as a foreign correspondent and consequently would miss most of the changes that occurred in his homeland, but he preferred life on the road to being behind a desk.

His first foreign assignment was India (he writes about it in his last book Travels with Herodotus): throwing off the yoke of colonialism meant a lot of countries were turning to the Soviet bloc for ideas, for support and materials; so he also went to China, but cut short a side-trip to Japan when he had to resign from his paper in solidarity with the other reporters who had walked out. His passion for the Third World was stoked and his anti-colonial outlook meant he would become more than a journalist covering politics abroad: he would become an interpreter of cultures.

But while many of us go in search of the exotic, this is not RK's aim:

"The so-called exotic has never fascinated me, even though I came to spend more than a dozen years in a world that is exotic by definition. I did not write about hunting crocodiles or head-hunters although I admit they are interesting subjects. I discovered instead a different reality, one that attracted me more than expeditions to the villages of witch doctors or wild animal reserves. A new Africa was being born — and this was not a figure of speech nor a platitude from an editorial. The hour of its birth was sometimes dramatic and painful, sometimes enjoyable and jubilant; it was always different (from our point of view) from anything we had known, and it was exactly this difference that struck me as new, as the previously undescribed, as the exotic." (The Soccer War, p. 21)

Kapuskinski identified with Africans' struggle under colonialism, but Africans found it hard to believe that whites had colonized other whites, just as they found it hard to understand him when he talked about tramcars or snow. Snow recurs in his work, especially in a wonderful passage about frozen corridors in the mist found in Imperium which can be reread like parts of Dickens, proving ultimately that Kapuskinski is a sensual rather than an intellectual writer. 

He interviews 10-year-old Tanya in Yakutsk:

"One can recognize a great cold, she explains to me, by the bright, shining mist that hangs in the air. When a person walks, a corridor forms in the mist. The corridor has the shape of that person's silhouette. The person passes, but the corridor remains, immobile in the mist. A large man makes a huge corridor, and a small child — a small corridor… Walking out in the morning, Tanya can tell from these corridors whether her girlfriends have already gone to school…
   "If in the morning there are no corridors that correspond to the stature of students from the elementary school, it means that the cold is so great that classes have been canceled and the children are staying home.
   "Sometimes one sees a corridor that is very crooked and then abruptly stops. It means — Tanya lowers her voice — that some drunk was walking, tripped, and fell. In a great cold, drunks frequently freeze to death. Then such a corridor looks like a dead-end street."

But Kapuscinski was known for embroidering his tales and although his friends took his stories with a pinch of salt, he invented a gonzo persona for himself: the death-defying journalist who faced firing squads without flinching and was lucky when someone bought off the commandant with liquor, etc etc. The problem is, according to his biographer, Ryszard began to believe these myths too.

After witnessing the tragic collapse of the revolution in Congo in 1960, RK wrote cynically about the prospects for the nascent state in which the "most backward country in Africa came under the control of the most worthless, insignificant people in Europe" (Belgium) and was carved up by imperialist Western powers, notably the USA. His reports in the press raised nearly 3 million zloty for the Lumumba Fund in Poland. In 1962 RK became the only foreign correspondent of the Polish Press Agency and the whole world became his beat. It really sounds like a classic Polish joke: How many Polish reporters does it take to cover the foreign beat? One.

But that one is astonishing. He witnessed 27 revolutions, civil wars or coups d'etat. He thought it was good to know two or three languages but carried on learning until he knew seven or more. This helped him in Angola and even Gdansk. His African reports are published as "Special bulletins" by the Polish Press Agency, which means high-ranking party officials can read them but their candid analysis of affairs cannot receive wide circulation in the daily press. This puts him in a privileged position: he can speak his mind, but then knows his work is not reaching the widest audience. But these were not all political or economic reports, RK took a delight in meeting everyday people and writing about them. His boss loved his style so didn't chide him when he vanished for weeks on end or turned in short pieces. He used his skill brilliantly. When he was sent to Russia to cover the 50th anniversary of the October Revolution in 1967, "he writes from the viewpoint of a man who is surprised. This permits him to tell us things about the Soviet system that he couldn't say in any other way. It's a masterpiece — to write so much truth without necessarily being critical. The wolf is fed, and the sheep is still in one piece."

Off to Chile he hears rumors of a coup and sends them home in a not-for-publication special bulletin, but the header gets lost and his article appears on the front page of a daily paper. Salvador Allende looks out for him so instead of arrest he is only deported to Brazil.

Book jackets always refer to him meeting Che Guevara and Patrice Lumumba but that is not true: however he never corrected those statements. He didn't have to lie — he was RK, but obviously, Domoslawski thinks, he lacked self-confidence.

What we learn from RK's work is that there is no such thing as objective reporting. He tries to give both viewpoints but you can always see where his sympathies lie. In Angola he gets the story of a lifetime. The Cubans have sent military advisers to the MPLA. This is a bombshell, but how does he know? Well, the Cubans are operating via Russian intermediaries and the only person who speaks Spanish, Portuguese and Russian is Kapuskinski, so he is drafted into the meetings to interpret! He is sitting there as a civil war is being hatched, but he cannot do anything about it. If he fires off a telegram to Warsaw as a "Special Bulletin" it might get intercepted; if the news leaks out then the Western powers may send in their troops. Clearly his sympathies were with the Marxists and that was more important than getting the scoop.

Africans are sometimes critical of his writing on Africa as simplistic, and borderline racist, but he has a passion that ignites his prose, and reminds us of the passion Germans in the 19th century had for the American Indian. Far from being objective he even takes up arms when he is with the MPLA at the front and caught in a firefight.

Back in Poland Socialism has evolved into consumerism, with money borrowed from the West, but the government is crumbling. RK writes his great book, The Emperor, ostensibly about the fall of Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, but as it appears weekly people start to read it as an allegory about the corrupt "court" of Gierek, Poland's lax ruler. One reviewer says it's as if Kafka had written The Castle from inside the keep. The censors are afraid to touch it because that will show they really feel there is something to the fabled parallels between their own collapsing bureaucracy and Selassie's.

Poland changes; the Solidarity movement breaks out in the shipyards and Kapuskinski is sent to cover it, and of course writes the best reports, not covering Walesa's speeches so much as talking to the ordinary striking workers, many of whom are passing the time by reading his books! But Walesa inspires him and he sides against the government, losing his job. However his books have been translated and he is able to leave Poland and travel to Europe and the United States as a speaker. But all reports are that he is not very good on the podium: even as a teacher of journalism, his students expect him to regale them with anecdotes about Che Guevara, instead he discusses the finer points of Latin American Marxist theory. (As a former Catholic he was drawn to "liberation theology.")

And there are the famous missing pages (15 of them) from the American edition of Shah of Shahs, which discuss the CIA's role in the Iranian revolution and the overthrow of Mosaddegh in 1953. Domoslawski can find no evidence of any American editor asking for the cuts: only RK himself could have censored his own writing: perhaps he knew that although he was always a fierce critic of Yankee Imperialism he would be looking to America for prizes, awards and lectureships and so better retract his fangs a bit. Or perhaps he was afraid the CIA had files on him and could expose his role in providing information on Americans to his own secret service.

But one searing truth is, Kapuskinski couldn't handle criticism and was always taken aback by fact-checkers who critiqued his works on Iran and Ethiopia. He was creating a new kind of literature: a fictionalized reportage that has all the elements of truth but which are configured in a way to suit the author rather than reality. You might say it's magic realism applied to journalism as seen, for example, in the works of Bruce Chatwin. Rather than magic realism, Domoslawski calls it "tropical baroque."

At the end of his life, RK wrote out a quote from Mircea Eliade's diary: "My best books will be written by someone else." He had abandoned the third in his "power" trilogy — a biography of Idi Amin — to rush through Russia after perestroika and write Imperium, his masterful account of the collapse of the Soviet Union. He wanted to write a summing up of all his thoughts on Latin America in a book called Fiesta, but set that aside when he decided to retrace Bernard Malinowski's steps to the Trobriand Islands and write about that instead, one of the last "uncivilized" places on earth, but he became too ill.

He left behind a globe on his desk and on each continent were posted notes:

North America: community
South America: trust
Eurasia: Inquiring nature, openness, joy, friendship, sympathy, hope
Australia: no comments
Africa: LOVE

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The Man In The Iron Mask Schleps 'Round The World

by Stephen J. Gertz

"Who was that masked man?"
"I don't know but I wanted to thank him."

On New Years Day, 1908, Harry Bensley (1876-1956), a well-to-do lone ranger involved in a £21,000 wager  that he could walk around the world in an iron mask and marry without revealing his identity, embarked on his journey, a trek that began at home in Great Britain and supposedly took him through China and Persia before the outbreak of WWI brought his global schlep to a screeching halt in Genoa, Italy.

The terms of the wager - purportedly made between J.P. Morgan and Lord Lonsdale with Harry the volunteer test subject - stipulated that Bensley begin his journey with a single pound note and a change of underwear through 169 British cities and towns in a specific order;  he would have to collect a signature from a local prominent resident to prove that he had been there. After that he would begin a tour of eighteen countries in a pre-specified order. He was to support himself along the way by selling postcards such as this one, which portrays him in his knight's helmet with printed sign in lieu of  plume, sweater embroidered on the rear with the legend, "Walking Round the World Masked," a custom pram which should have been called "The Orient Non-Express" but wasn't, and paid attendant in matching sweater whose name is unknown but whom we shall call Tonto to our masked Kimosabe.

Some people, of skeptical turn of mind, claimed that Bensley never left England. Oh, cruel nattering by nincompoops of little faith!

But here's the proof that Bensley, in full metal masquerade from the neck up, and with pram and attendant present, perambulated to a photography studio for a series of promotional mug shots. Whether he ever actually left the studio and crossed the English Channel to promenade through Europe and Asia is another story.

One can't help but wonder if he wound up in the Bastille, courtesy of the King of France, for claiming to be the King's twin brother, his personal attendant, The One Musketeer, in the cell next door. Bensley didn't but his investments in Russia were wiped-out during the Bolshevik Revolution, he was left destitute, and worked low-paying unskilled jobs until his death.

Oh, ladies of too much faith! Harry supposedly received over 200 marriage proposals during his voyage from damsels who had never laid eyes upon his visage and didn't care. His wife, whom he  married c. 1898, ten years before the wager, was, presumably, not amused. But, then again, maybe she was. She knew what he looked like behind the wrought iron veil.
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BENSLEY, Harry. Unused original photo-postcard, approx. 5-1/4 x 3-3/8 inches. N.p. {England], c. 1908
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Image courtesy of Garrett Scott, The Bibliophagist, currently offering this item, with our thanks.
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A Thrilling Dust Jacket By Paul Davis

by Stephen J. Gertz

First edition, 1963.

In 1963, after publishing seven James Bond novels, Ian Fleming wrote something entirely different after being offered a writer's dream assignment. At the behest of his friend, Charles Denis Hamilton, editor of the Sunday Times of London, Fleming undertook a five-week, all-expenses paid trip to visit and report on the world's most exciting cities.

The result was Thrilling Cities (London: Jonathan Cape, 1963), its material ultimately providing Fleming with background for the five Bond novels and seven short stories that followed.

The book featured a stunning dust jacket design by Paul Davis.

Three Penny Opera. 1976.
Raul Julia.

Anyone alive, awake  and living in New York City during the 1970s knows the work of Paul Davis, whose posters for Joseph Papp's Public Theater and Shakespeare in the Park were instantly iconic and remain indelible images.

"The revolution was already in full swing when in the late 1950s a young artist named Paul Davis entered the fray. Some renegade illustrators and art directors had already begun to revolt against the saccharine realism and sentimental concepts prevalent in most American magazines and advertising...

Henry V. 1976.
Paul Rudd.

"Although Paul Davis was not among this first wave, he was swept up by it and soon contributed to the illustration and design of the epoch. By the early 1960s, he had developed a distinct visual persona which, owing to a unique confluence of primitive and folk arts, brought a fresh new American look to illustration. In a relatively short time he was among the most prolific of the new illustrators, and his style had a staggering impact on the field...

"From the sixties to the present, he has contributed some paradigmatic approaches to the eclectic mix of American graphic art" (1989 AIGA Award, biography by Steven Heller).

Hamlet. 1975.
Sam Waterston.

Davis, born in 1938 in Oklahoma, told Heller of his early years during the 50s. “It was a turning point in American illustration, It was a rejection of Norman Rockwell, who was at his best a great Flemish painter and at his worst a bad cartoonist, as well as of the entrenched Westport style of romantic illustration.”

Gaining confidence, he took his portfolio to Push Pin, Milton Glaser and Seymour Chwast's design shop, at the time the hottest in the business. After initial rejection they asked to rep his work. Influenced by many, including Thomas Hart Benton, Davis was attracted to American folk art. "There was no school here," he said, "there was no academia."

Measure For Measure. 1976.
Meryl Streep and John Cazale.

His style ultimately developed into fusion of American indigenous art and the surrealism of René Magritte. In 1963 he left Push Pin to work as an independent. The dust jacket for Thrilling Cities followed in that year. As the 60s evolved, so did Davis, who now began to incorporate elements of social realism into his work. By the end of the 60s, however, he made a conscious decision to "rid my work of all the elements that referred to other styles."

The Taming of the Shrew. 1978.
Meryl Streep and Raul Julia.

Yet those influences could not be extinguished and they are seen in what became his lasting contribution to American graphic art: his posters for Joseph Papp. They "challenged the conventions of contemporary theater advertising (particularly posters) in three ways: First, they were not encumbered by the usual bank of ”ego“ copy...Second, without mimicking style, Davis' posters referred to the late 19th-century European tradition of poster art which was ignored by the contemporary posterists...The third, and final, challenge to conventional theater posters was his basic methodology. Davis read the play, went to the rehearsals or readings, and talked to the actors and directors. 'They seemed to think,' he says, 'that I was doing this revolutionary thing by actually reading the scripts'" (ibid., Heller).

First edition, 1968.
The influence of American folk art  is clear.

The stylistic journey of Paul Davis from Thrilling Cities in 1963 to True Grit in 1968 through his theater posters during the mid-1970s encapsulates American graphic design during the latter half of the 20th century, and captures an artist avoiding the faddism of '60s pop and psychedelia to follow his own path toward an instantly recognizable and lasting body of work.

First edition, 1976.

In a declarative meow to make cat lovers purr, Davis brought his chops to bear on the feline side of life with his dust jacket for Jean-Claude Suares and Seymour Chwast's The Illustrated Cat (1976).

LEEUW, Hendrik De. Sinful Cities of the Western World.
NY: Pyramid #27, 1951. First edition in paperback.
Cover by Fred. W. Meyer.
First edition: NY: Citadel, 1946.

Ian Fleming's Thrilling Cities is not to be confused with Hendrik De Leeuw's Sinful Cities of the Western World which deals with an altogether different sort of thrilling urban adventure.

Fleming dedicated Thrilling Cities to Charles Denis Hamilton, the Times editor who was responsible for Fleming's assignment. Hamilton's copy, the dedication copy inscribed by Fleming, in fine condition as seen in today's header image, recently came to market. It sold for £12,500 ($20,200).

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Image of Thrilling Cities courtesy of Peter Harrington, with our thanks.
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Welcome To Marriage Island, The Isle of Connubial Blitz (1765)

by Stephen J. Gertz

Welcome Isola del Maritaggio (Marriage Island), the Too-Much-Reality TV show! I'm your host, Al Fresco, sitting in for Silvio Berlusconi who is on special assignation. 

Each week contestants enter the island through the ports of Love, Bad Advice, or Self-Interest but once on the island it is impossible to escape! You may, however, if things get tough, claw your way over to Divorce Peninsula on the north side of the main island or, if fortune smiles, Widowhood Peninsula on its West coast where the Bridge of Sighs of Relief provides comfort for the superficially bereaved.

Challenging hot-spots on the main island include the Provinces of the Jealous, the Unhappy, the Incompatible, and the Great Province of Cuckolds. With all the hustle and bustle don't worry about missing a trek up and through the Mountains of In-Laws; it's unavoidable. Afterward, you can bathe in the River Chaste.

Lover's Isle.

Contestants aren't told but they can avoid Marriage Island altogether simply by sailing around it to Lover's Isle. It's one of those things best discovered on their own particularly after the knot is tied. We keep our mouths shut - unless, of course, they're indiscreet or we need to spike the ratings.

Bigamy Island.

Masochistic contestants who can't get enough of Marriage Island can opt for a lifetime on Bigamy Island, a spin-off series with no end to story complications; it'll run forever as long as the homicide rate stays under control.

Note horned cuckold at right.

If you would like to become a contestant, you will be sent, for a small four-figure non-refundable deposit, Carta Topografica dell'Isola Maritaggio, a satiric travelogue written by Eustache Le Noble (1643-1711), who led a dissipated life, was jailed and fell passionately in love with a beautiful grocer-woman who was doing time in the same prison. This slight volume originally appeared in French as Carte de l'isle de mariage in 1705, and was translated into Italian and published in 1765. Please allow 10-14 days for delivery.

 But for now, buona fortuna e addio from Isola del Maritaggio!

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LE NOBLE, Eustache. Carta Topografica dell'Isola Maritaggio di Monsieur Le Noble per la Prima Volta Tradotta Dal Francese in Italiano. Cosmopoli [Italy]: n.p., 1765. First Italian edition. Octavo. 40 pp. One folding map.

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Map and titlepage images courtesy of Altea Gallery, currently offering this item, with our thanks.
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Speaking of marriage:

Novelist Richard Brautigan's Unrecorded One Day Marriage Certificate Surfaces.
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The Gentle Art of Regurgitation During Travel by Coach, 1826

by Stephen J. Gertz

Inconveniences No. 5
Cruels effets d'une digestion interrompue
(The Cruel Effects of Interrupted Digestion).

Travel prior to rail was a harsh and rigorous affair. Rough, unpaved roads. and coaches with poor shock-absorbing suspensions rattled the bones and brought ache to the marrow. Highwaymen, accidents often serious, roadside repairs, casual arrival and departure times, poor food and shelter at roadside inns, and forget about restroom stops, were only a few of the manifold indignities to be endured. So uncomfortable and often painful was it that in the Marquis de Sade's novel, Juliette, the worldly sister of the hapless and hopelessly innocent Justine doses herself with laudanum (tincture of opium) as a matter of course when traveling long distances by coach.

And, yes, the prospect of motion sickness, mal de mer sur la terre (landside upchuck) was always a threat.

The inconvenient rigors of travel by coach were illustrated in a suite of twelve highly amusing plates by Xavier Leprince titled Inconvéniens d'un Voyage en Diligence (1826), an extremely rare color-plate book.

Plate No. 5 presents an amusing, if cautionary, piece de l'emesis vue de la nausée as a coach speeds along, causing the damsel riding atop it to hurl her cookies, which carom off a passenger's head and into a roadside beggar's chapeau, a hat-trick not envisioned by any magician before or since, nor a an undigested bank-shot by Minnesota Fats.

Auguste-Xavier Leprince (1799-1826), French painter and lithographer, "was the son and pupil of the painter and lithographer Anne-Pierre Leprince and the elder brother of the painters Robert-Leopold Leprince (1800-47) and Gustave Leprince (1810-37). Leprince received a medal at his first Salon of 1819 for one of six entries, five of which were landscapes of 17th century Dutch inspiration, which came possibly via the work of Jean-Louis Demarne. Leprince quickly learned to vary the contents of his paintings: at the Salon of 1822 his entries included three Paris street scenes, three portraits, and two scenes on board a frigate. His numerous Paris street scenes usually depicted some well-known contemporary event...In the last year of his short life Leprince showed himself to be a sensitive watercolour painter and lithographer, publishing a set of twelve lithographs entitled Inconvéniens d'un Voyage en Diligence" (Grove Dictionary of Art).

Indeed, bringing up the belly has rarely been so sensitively, artfully, and amusingly depicted. Heave-ha.
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LEPRINCE, Xavier. Inconvéniens d'un Voyage en Diligence. Douze Tableaux, Lithographiés par... Paris: Chez Gihaut Freres... et Sazerac et Duval, 1826.

First edition. Oblong folio. Plate size: 14 5/8 x 11 inches (371 x 279 mm.) Wrapper size: 16 7/8 x 11 3/8 inches (429 x 288 mm.) Twelve hand-colored lithographed plates. Lithography by Englemann. Original tan wrappers printed in black.

Lipperheide 3658.
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Image courtesy of David Brass Rare Books, with our thanks.
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Destination: Books!

by Stephen J. Gertz

Nota Bene, Canadian bookman and Biblio File host Nigel Beale's blog, has developed into a new online service for bibliophiles, Literary Tourist.

The site's aim is to provide the traveling public - and those who love books - with useful information that will help them find and enjoy the best possible literary travel experiences, and, in so doing promote the well-being of used antiquarian bookstores and other literary destinations in North America and around the globe.

Literary Tourist's core database of  used/antiquarian bookstores comes from Book Hunter Press (BHP) a small publishing firm established in 1993 by David and Susan Siegel as a “service to our fellow bibliomaniacs.” BHP published seven North American regional Used Book Lover’s Guides with the goal of making them "the Frommers of the used books world.'

Nigel Beale points the way.

In late 2009  Literary Tourist acquired Book Hunter Press and spent the following year researching and developing this website. The existing database of some 8,000 used bookstores was refined and updated, and hundreds of literary landmarks, book fairs, writers’ festivals, rare book libraries and other literary destinations, events and activities were added, all with the goal of making travel more fun and exciting for book lovers.

The Nota Bene blog continues to be available at no cost through the new site, and for a modest $24.95 annual membership you can access Literary Tourist's entire online database of bookstores and literary destinations plus get exclusive content, event and sale updates, discounts, and more.

We like the new site,  all it has to offer, and wish Nigel Beale well.

Now that Nigel has staked his claim to become the Arthur Frommer of the book world, we eagerly await Rare Books On $5 A Day, a fictitious non-fiction novel about a parallel universe dreamed of but heretofore a figment of the imagination and fervid desire of a book collector of very modest means.

In occupied post-WWII Japan, Cary Grant and
John Garfield, naval officers and heavily armed
rare book dealers, meet with one Mitsuo Nitta
and make a deal to ship massive numbers of
rare American scientific journals in cargo
containers stenciled: Destination Tokyo!

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With the exception of the footer, all images courtesy of Nigel Beale, with our thanks.

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The Way It Was In Tripoli, 1817

by Stephen J Gertz

Tully (Richard). Narrative of a Ten Years' Residence at Tripoli in Africa.
London: Printed for Henry Colburn..., 1817

In 1816, Tripoli was one of the pirate Barbary States, collecting tribute from the U.S. in exchange for  protection of America's maritime commerce in the Mediterranean. The first and second Barbary Wars had been fought by the U.S. against the Pasha's demands for increased amounts of extortionate baksheesh.

The English-speaking public had little knowledge of Tripoli. That would change in 1816 with the publication of Narrative of a Ten Years' Residence at Tripoli in Africa, still, rare book or otherwise, a key behind-the-scenes source. This singular collection of letters relating to Tripoli contains valuable information on the court of the city's Pasha and remains one of the few public accounts  of the private world of the North African despot.

Officers of the Grand Seraglio regaling.

As admitted in the Preface, the letters were actually written by Miss Tully, the sister-in-law of Richard Tully, British Consul in Tripoli (1783-1793) yet, curiously, Edwards, in his Catalogue of books on Africa, attributes the letters to Tully himself. All of Tully's female relations were, it seems, on very intimate terms with the family of the Pasha, which gave the author entre-nous opportunity to collect a huge amount of exotic information.

Sidy Hassan, late Bey of Tripoly.

First published in 1816, the letters detail every aspect of life at the Pasha's court and the daily world  of the ordinary person, containing exact descriptions of houses, mosques, clothing, mores, manners, and customs. The work contains a list of the names of the Royal Family of Tripoli, and an appendix with Moorish vocabulary.

An Egyptian Puppet Shew.

"It contains the only exact account which has ever been made publicly known of the private manners and conduct of the Bashaw of Tripoli. It has also been the object of the author to present a faithful picture of the manners, ideas and sentiments of the Moors" [Vorwort].

A Bedouin Peasant Woman.

So faithful, indeed, that the book has found a place in English literature, providing descriptive source material for many works by authors who had never been to Tripoli - or any other  Arab land - and/or borrowed from this book, not the least of whom was Byron, who admitted to plagiarizing it

Arabs recreating in the Desert.

"Almost all Don Juan is real life, either my own, or from people I knew. By the way, much of the description of the furniture, in Canto Third, is taken from Tully's Tripoli (pray note this), and the rest from my own observation. Remember, I never meant to conceal this at all, and have only not stated it, because Don Juan  had no preface, nor name to it" (Lord Byron to John Murray, publisher, August 23, 1821).

It is unlikely that any Romantic poetry will be written about Tripoli under the rule of Mohammar Quadaffi [fill-in alternative spellings], nor about his furniture. That he made his bed and now has to sleep in it, however, does have its lyric possibilities.

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Tully (Richard). Narrative of a Ten Years' Residence at Tripoli in Africa, published from the originals in the possession of the family of the late Richard Tully, Esq., the British consul: comprising authentic memoirs and anecdotes of the reigning Bashaw, his family, and other persons of distinction; also an account of the domestic manners of the Moors, Arabs, and Turks. London: Printed for Henry Colburn..., 1817.

Second edition. Quarto. xvi, 376 (incl. index), [2] pp. Folding engraved map,  seven hand-coloured aquatint plates. Contains three additional plates not found in the first edition.

Abbey, Travel 301; Atabey 1241; Blackmer 1682; Tooley 494. 
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Image courtesy of Antiquariat Forum, with our thanks.
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A Bad Hair Day In Tibet

by Stephen J. Gertz

In 1903, fearful that the Chinese were on the verge of granting Tibet to Russia  and endangering their Raj in India, the British sent a military expedition into Tibet to prevent the rumor from becoming a reality.

The commander of the expedition, Sir Francis Younghusband, brought along British civil servant and photographer John Claude White to document the campaign. White took a series of seventy photographs which were collected in an album c. 1905. Amongst the platinum prints and two folding panoramas is this striking image of Tibetan nuns.

Considering that Buddhist nuns are required to keep their hair cropped short it is unclear why this group allowed their hair to grow to such impious length. As recently as 2002, the Chinese were imprisoning Tibetan nuns and forcing them to let their hair grow out, the least offensive of their many humiliating punishments.

The Tibetans were none too happy with the British incursion, the Chinese even less so, and the British were none too kind to the Tibetans. Brigadier-General James Ronald Leslie Macdonald, leading a military force of over 3,000, including Nepalese Gurkhas, faced off against 3,000 Tibetan troops armed with muskets at the Battle of Guru, and a very short battle it was. After  negotiations to head things off failed, confusion ensued and the shooting began. The British, armed with Maxim machine guns, mowed down between 600-700 Tibetan troops. The rest were allowed to peacefully retreat. Younghusband, who now assumed command of the British army, marched into Lhasa and negotiated a treaty with the Regent, who declared, "When one has known the scorpion [China] the frog [Britain] is divine."

The British military mission ended in 1904, unpopular at home and everywhere else.

This album was recently at Bonhams for auction. It sold for £38,400 ($61,592), inclusive of buyer’s premium.
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[WHITE, JOHN CLAUDE]. An album of important images taken by John Claude White during Sir Francis Younghusband's Tibet Mission of 1903-1904. 70 platinum prints and 2 folding panoramas, images approximately 160 x 210mm., captioned on the mounts, contemporary half green morocco, lettered 'TIBET' on the upper cover, sailcloth chemise, oblong folio, [c.1905]
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Image courtesy of Bonhams.

Booktryst thanks Bookdealer for the lead.
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An Oasis For Writers and Readers

by Stephen J. Gertz

In the heart of the Southern California desert, two hours from Los Angeles, lies a small, tranquil oasis with mineral pools and lagoon, aromatic garden, and time, blessed quiet, quality time to be undisturbed and productive, if you wish, or undisturbed and completely unproductive. It is a jewel in the sand.

As such, it is the perfect spot for working or aspiring writers in search of comfortable isolation and solitude to jump-start creativity and get that project in gear. And if you've been looking at a pile of books you promised yourself to get to but haven't because the quotidian is cramping your style it is the ideal reader's retreat.

A view from the pool.

The Hacienda Hot Springs Inn, located in Desert Hot Springs, is a boutique hotel with a relaxed Old World ambience. With only six cozy and attractive guest rooms you receive attention unlikely at larger hotels - if you want it - and never be annoyed by noise from other guests.

Author Rachel Resnick calls it "a magical place...mind-bendingly gorgeous...blissed out...jellyfish relaxed....inspiring." Writers On Fire, which Resnick established to organize writer workshop-retreats, is holding one at the Hacienda Hot Springs Inn October 15-17 2010. Writers On Fire, which has held retreats in lovely spots around the world, will likely return to the Hacienda to accommodate the demand.

Afternoon in paradise.

The proprietor, William Dailey, knows from books, writing,  and reading; William Dailey Rare Books has been an important part of the Southern California book community for close to forty years. Appropriately, he keeps a library of vintage books at the Hacienda. He's even written a  bibliography on books about the Southern California desert.

Full disclosure: I am a close friend and former employee of Mr. Dailey. I was present when Dailey originally bought the property; at the time it was a near-derelict dump. What he has done with it is nothing short of amazing; he has invested an enormous amount of time and money into developing the Hacienda into a world-class retreat. I was an early guest at the Hacienda Hot Springs Inn and have  unforgettable memories of my stay there.

Dusk falls on the Hacienda Hot Springs Inn.

I have no doubt that you will, too. For writing, reading, to foster creativity in all its forms (or just to do nothing and do it well) the Hacienda Hot Springs Inn can't be beat.
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